The project "picidae" (Community Network, Installation, 2007) by Christoph Wachter (de/ch) and Mathias Jud (de/ch) was honourably mentioned by the Transmediale jury.

"Picidae" is open source software that is designed to render people capable of getting around Internet censorship.While its test model is China, the project is not bound to this country. "Picidae" is a useful and dynamically developing tool that works by serving the user her desired web-site as a picture so that the search for keywords cannot be exercised (therefore the data subjected to censorship cannot be identified). It is a project following a rich tradition of political and activist software, which joins the discussion on what censorship might mean and work towards. Political censorship, ethical censorship, self-censorship and censorship in the form of discipline and control mechanisms are more interlaced and interdependent than usually portrayed by official policies. Even direct censorship can yield some favorable results: from the class of correctors who check, apart from the ideological content, for various types of mistakes, contributing to the overall accuracy and preciseness of paper publications to strong counter reactions that give birth to the rich dissident cultures of resistance. With direct censorship it is easy to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘us’ and ‘them’ in a well-defined system of moral coordinates.


This movie is part of the collection: Community Video

Producer: Alberto Mussolini, Valeria Palermo, Sara Tirelli
Audio/Visual: sound, color
Keywords: picidae; transmediale; firewall china; Christoph Wachter; Mathias Jud

Individual Files

Be the first to write a review
Downloaded 215 times Reviews